


Cyber-Serenity

by silveradept



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:58:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7820566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A strange blue box contains a nearly-naked man with an offer to travel the 'Verse and get paid handsomely for it. This makes Mal deeply suspicious. His suspicion is warranted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cyber-Serenity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/gifts).



The blue...thing that had appeared in his engineering area and given Kaylee a fright was weird. The man that had come out of the blue box wearing a fez was weirder. That he was wearing _only_ the fez might have been the weirdest part, but Mal had been in more than a few situations himself where his clothing had become optional without his permission, so he was inclined to be forgiving of that. No, what was strange right now was that this person that he had never met before in his life knew his name and title on board this ship.

"Captain Reynolds, I presume?" he said, smiling broadly and hesitating a bit, as if it were a punchline to some hidden joke. "No? What year is this, then, when history has become so devalued that a simple joke about finding the lost goes without laughter?" The stranger started to pace around the engine room, stopping to tap a little on the engines, prompting a squeak of protest from Kaylee.

"This is a fine ship, Captain Reynolds. _Firefly_ -class, from the sound of the engines. She's very happy with you, you know. Well-maintained, crewed well, and used for a fulfilling purpose running contraband all across the universe."

"Um...beggin' your pardon, but don't you want to put some clothes on?" Mal had only seen a couple of people that callous about nudity, and both of them had been trained as Companions.

"Hrm?" The strange man looked down, realized his state of dress, and then covered himself with the fez, apologizing as he unlocked and then disappeared back inside the blue box. Several minutes passed before he returned, wearing more sensible clothing on his body and the fez on his head.

"Now, where was I? Oh, yes, I was about to offer you a job, Captain Reynolds. I need someone with your skill set to be my companion--"

"Whoa, wait a minute, Mister--"

"Doctor."

"What?"

"Doctor. I'm The Doctor."

"I already have one."

"I know that. I need a companion--"

"Then you're asking the wrong guy. Inara's shuttle is attached in the cargo bay. She's your Companion."

The Doctor looked confused for a bit, then slipped inside the blue box. A THOOM and a scraping sound followed as the blue box slowly dematerialized from the engine room.

"Now how did he...?" Mal's question hung in the air unfinished as he looked for the blue box that was just there a moment ago.

It was a week, just after dropping off some liberated Alliance goods when the scraping sound returned and the blue box rematerialized in the cargo bay Mal was just getting ready to leave. The Doctor popped his head out and looked at Mal.

"Ah! Captain Reynolds! Your advice about seeing Ms. Serra was, ah, well, apparently she was in the middle of a session with a client when I arrived, and she doesn't take well to interruptions. I'm very sorry for the slap, and quite glad she chose not to follow through on any of those threats."

"I think you're feeling a little loopy there, friend. Inara can muster more than a few powerful blows if she doesn't want you to come back to her, but there's nothing that she's done to me lately. You sure you're all right?"

The Doctor looked confused as he stepped out - properly clothed this time - onto the deck of Serenity's cargo hold. "What year is it?"

"It's 2517! You were just here a week ago. What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Ah, that. Well, you see, it turns out that I need someone with your unique skills, Captain, and so I'm here to offer you the chance to see time and space from a perspective nobody else can."

"How well does it pay?"

The Doctor stopped for a moment, as if he were trying to recall the concept of money long enough for it to be useful. "I'm sure that we can find compensation enough for you, Captain. Credits, gold, jewels, food, pictures of the most beautiful being on Ceres Five, whatever passes for currency here."

Mal wasn't sure that this was a good idea. Everything about this guy made it sound like he wasn't quite all there, and since he had only met this guy before when he was naked, this job sounded like the kind of thing where you would end up fleeing from an entire town shooting at you. That said, it had been a week without any job leads that paid more than a pittance, and if this Doctor was good on his word, there might not need to be any more jobs for a while. Alliance patrols were definitely increasing in this part of space, and if they wanted to move on, they were going to need a ready source of cash to get enough fuel so they could get away. That might be worth the risk of things going horribly.

"Shiny. What's the job?"

\---

"I figured you had some sort of thing going on where you could hide a change of clothes in a small box." Mal said, stepping into the TARDIS bridge. "I didn't realize how much you had stuffed into here, but you don't strike me as the kind of man who works small stage crowds with tricks everyone's seen."

If The Doctor was frustrated that his efforts to get Mal to exclaim that this spacecraft was bigger on the inside, he hid it well. Mal wasn't sure why he wanted it so bad, but really, all spacecraft were bigger on the inside, especially when you had a good crew to help make the space warm. For all the movement and gesturing and showmanship that Mal saw, The Doctor didn't really seem to express a full emotional suite, and that concerned Mal a bit. People who hid things like emotions tended to want to be heroes...or martyrs. Neither of them were good people to take jobs from if you wanted to get paid or stay alive. Mal was beginning to regret having accepted the job, and he still didn't completely know what it was yet.

"Is there anyone else on board?" he asked. "Seems like you could host a really good party in here."

"No, there's nobody else here right now. I usually travel with others, but..." The Doctor stopped his frantic dash across the various consoles for a minute, giving Mal a glimpse of true emotion, of pain and loneliness and forever wandering the cosmos, ultimately alone, before a buzzer's alarm brought him back to full speed. Mal understood. Life without the people on board wouldn't be much of a life. That time Serenity had just been floating in space while the assassin had been inside had been the worst waiting. It was a good plan, and only River could have come up with it, but he had felt helpless and alone, and he didn't really want that ever again. The Doctor tried to hide it with flashy words, constantly running around, and practically begging everyone he met to acknowledge how clever and smart he was. In the end, though, Mal knew that he was just trying to keep busy so that he didn't have to think about something important.

The TARDIS came to a gentle halt with a satisfying thump that echoed throughout the bridge chamber. The Doctor sprang from the console and headed to the door, grabbing a strange wand sticking out from one of the console pieces on the way.

"Welcome to the plains of Sagittarius VII, where everyone must wear swimsuits by law!" he said, throwing open the doors and showing Mal...a town that looked a lot like the one he had just left after cashing out his goods. For a place that was supposed to be swimsuits-only, this place lacked sand and lots of attractive people in very little clothing. Considering how many times The Doctor had been off or wrong by this point, Mal was taking it in stride. Except, maybe, for the really confused look on his face about their destination.

When the expected reaction did not materialize, The Doctor turned around to see what he was actually offering. Without missing a beat, he brightened. "Oh, this is Sagittarius IX! Probably a better idea for you, anyway, Captain Reynolds. I don't think I have any swimsuits you would feel comfortable in, anyway." The Doctor jumped out of the TARDIS, heading toward the lone building in the distance, whistling a melody that was supposed to be happy and jaunty, but left Mal feeling chilly inside. Mal followed, silently making sure that his gun was ready in case he needed it.

"Does this happen often?" Mal asked.

"Does what?"

"The off-course thing. Do you normally end up somewhere else than where you wanted to go?" Mal wasn't sure why anyone would want to stick with a ship that routinely went somewhere else than where it was told to go.

"Well, sometimes. The TARDIS has a mind of its own, and occasionally it decides to go somewhere else." The Doctor then launched into a story about how one time he had to reboot the universe by flying a woman he deeply cared about into the sun so that a giant paradox could get resolved. Mal politely nodded, and admitted to himself The Doctor could spin a yarn, but there was no way any of it was true.

The building turned out to be farther away than it looked, and Mal was glad that he had made this kind of trek regularly. Something else that was odd was that the town itself was surrounded by a ring of water, like a moat or a giant pool. There were several things suspended in the water, but Mal didn't get a good look at them as The Doctor strode over the bridge and into the town. Before Mal could suggest doing some reconnaissance, The Doctor crossed the town, opened the door of the building they had seen in the distance, apparently without a care for what was behind it, and strode into what appeared to be some sort of negotiation.

"Hello there! I'm The Doctor, and I'm your arbitrator!"

Mal took in the room. A group of people all hid on one side of the room, with one person at the table in the center, while a group of metal men in a perfect military formation stood silently on the other half, with one of them sitting at the table as well. The Doctor had mentioned that there might be strange creatures and aliens involved, but this looked like a bunch of scared civilians and an intruding military force.

"THAT WILL NOT BE NECESSARY." The metal man at the table spoke without moving its mouth, and the only indication that it understood the concept of a mouth was that the right region flashed while it talked. "WE HAVE JUST FINISHED."

"Wait, wait, wait," The Doctor said hurriedly, "we don't even know what's been agreed to."

The man at the table turned to The Doctor and smiled. "Complete surrender," he said, in a voice far too happy for the subject at hand, "with everyone on this planet to be converted to Cybermen, starting immediately."

"You can't do that!" The Doctor said. "Cyber-conversion destroys souls and makes monsters out of everyone they touch! You can't be serious!"

While The Doctor made his passionate case for continued humanity, Mal's slightly more cynical nature manifested in a deep, deep suspicion as to how convenient this situation was. He walked over to the person sitting at the table. 

"Now why would you want to give up your humanity so easily?" he drawled, wanting to sound stupid and ignorant. 

"Cyber-upgrades are the only way to survive. We welcome the presence of the cyber-collective and are more than happy to throw away our human failures, like emotions and fleshy bodies." The man at the table smiled something that looked like a smile, but was a little too shiny and forced to be natural. 

"Mm-hmm," Mal continued, thinking playing dumb would give him more information and maybe some truth, "but what about becoming a metal man is so appealing to everyone? Don't you think it would be nice to have some variety still. I mean, it looks like when you're done, you're not going to be able to be able to enjoy any of the finer parts of life, like a good drink and the companionship of someone willing to pour you another one."

"All will be upgraded," the man at the table said pleasantly, with another plastic smile attempting to convince Mal of his sincerity, "and then we will live without war, conquest, or division."

"So why did they pick you to negotiate, if you're so gung-ho about getting yourself a new paint job?" 

"I'm the mayor of the town. Just elected, of course. So I get to speak for everyone in this matter." Mal noticed some of the cheer wearing off at his continued questioning, and decided now would be the right time to put the screws to this faker.

"Is that so?" Mal's voice took on a more confrontational tone. "Well, now, if you were just elected, I reckon that means there's a functional democracy in place here. If I were feeling democratic, then I would _think_ ," Mal accented his speech by giving the other man what looked like a hearty and friendly back slap, "that in a case of life and death, these fine people here might appreciate being a say in whether they stayed human or were transformed into...whatever these are."

"Well," the man at the table said, still far too cheerfully for a being likely to be on the receiving end of a Browncoat's temper, "that's what makes representative democracy work. They vote me in, I get to make the decisions. It's that simple."

Mal nodded again, and moved in closer to the man at the table, so close that most civilized beings would claim that he was firmly inside their personal space bubbles. "And what would these fine people say," he said, raising his voice to make sure The Doctor heard him, "if it turned out their negotiator was already a metal man in a human skin suit?"

All conversation in the hall stopped as every eye turned toward Mal. 

"That's ridiculous," the man at the table said, but what had been only a barely audible hiss to Mal's ears became a full speaker crackle, exposing the truth to everyone assembled.

Mal grabbed the man at the table and tried to pick him up out of the chair on instinct. Unable to budge the negotiator, he turned toward the people standing in the corner, still looking at him. "He's a traitor," he shouted, pointing at the still-smiling man, "so why aren't you doing anything about him?"

"Captain Reynolds," The Doctor said quietly, "it might have something to do with the fact that all the beings in this room, except for you, aren't fully human."

"You mean they're _all_ metal men?" Mal said, a touch too loud for normal conversation.

With all eyes still locked on him, the massed chorus that emanated from the townspeople chilled Mal's body and sent his hand for his pistol. "THE TRUTH IS KNOWN," the many voices said in complete precision. "DELETE THE INTRUDERS."

Mal raised his gun, ready to fire, but The Doctor immediately pushed his hand away. "No, no, no! Remember! No guns, no violence, no fighting, and especially no eating pancakes on Thursdays."

"So what do we do instead?" Mal shouted, realizing that everyone in the room was now moving toward them.

The Doctor looked at him with what was clearly a situation-inappropriate twinkle in his eye.

"We run, Captain Reynolds, until one of us, probably me, thinks of something clever. Geronimoooooo!"

After several minutes of running and arguing about the various merits of fisticuffs, gunplay, and explosives to solve the problem (no, no, and certainly not, frustrating Mal even more), Mal felt no closer to anything clever, and he had to deal with the fact that there was a force field blocking their only way out of town, just past the moat. He could see the thing that was making the force field a ways off in the distance, back toward town, on their side of the field. 

Without thinking much about it, Mal drew his pistol and fired at the emitter, hitting it squarely and disabling that part of the force field fence.

"No, no, no!" The Doctor said, putting his hands in his face again. "Captain, while I admire your shooting skill, really, all that did was activate the minefield that is just behind the wall."

"Mines?" Mal said incredulously. "You didn't tell me this pool had mines!"

"I was just about to, when you fired on the emitter. I had the beginnings of a plan going, but now the are mines in front of us and angry clergymen behind us and must you keep pointing that gun everywhere? It's distracting."

"If I need to shoot someone--"

"--no. No shooting, no fighting, just diplomacy and clever use of science."

"I keep telling you, I never agreed to that! And right now, we could use a lot more shooting and much less running around and muttering like you're not all there!"

Mal kept his gun out while he searched for a rock. The Doctor was talking to himself (and maybe Mal) about a substance on Orion VI that made someone able to walk on water and an alien who had decided to use it on Earth for a laugh and then ended up as a major religious figure. Mal thought he might try to set things off by skipping a rock off the surface and seeing if he could get a mine to explode.

His first throw went unnoticed, but did nothing. His second throw was noticed by The Doctor, which brought him over, waving his arms and shouting for him to stop.

"Those mines are powered by thorium reactors, Captain. If you just casually set them off on a chain reaction, the orbit of this planet will be forever altered and it will begin a death spiral into the star, but nobody will be around to see it from all the radiation poisoning." At Mal's blank look, The Doctor sighed.

"Mines go boom, everyone dies."

The sound of a rifle crack and a bullet burying itself in the dirt in front of them brought Mal's gun back around to the angry mob descending.

"Mines don't go boom, _we_ die!" Mal shouted.

The Doctor took a good look at Mal's weapon, as if he was noticing it for the first time. "Captain, is that a 3-Mark-40 pistol, manufactured in 2217?"

"Yeah," Mal said. "Why?"

"How good is your aim?"

"Best in the 'Verse. Why?"

"If you want to get out of this alive, Captain, throw your pistol into the water between the two spires in the middle and then use this sonic screwdriver on it exactly when it touches the water." The Doctor threw Mal the strange-looking gadget he had taken from the TARDIS when they had landed on the planet. It had a very inviting button that Mal assumed would activate it when pressed.

Another bullet whizzed by Mal's head, cementing what would have otherwise been a very difficult decision. Turning around, he threw his gun into the air, tracking it with the sonic screwdriver at it headed toward the water. Mal felt a bullet graze his cheek, throwing his timing off just a bit, but he pushed the button on the sonic a little while after the gun slipped beneath the surface of the water.

Nothing happened. It took Mal a few more beats to realize that nothing happening meant that the angry mob had stopped shooting at them as well.

He jumped a little bit when The Doctor hit him with what seemed to him like a parody of a man giving another man a backslap.

"Well done, Captain Reynolds!" he exclaimed. "With the Cyber-Controller deactivated, the people will be able to return to their peaceful lives."

The Doctor and Mal made the long trek back to the TARDIS, The Doctor explaining with relish and really big words how the sonic screwdriver had accomplished the task of overwriting and then destroying the circuitry of the controller so that the people of the world wouldn't want to go investigating what was behind the force fields but when they were safely back on board, Mal couldn't let his curiosity go unanswered.

"So what did my gun have to do with that whole thing?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing really. I just abhor guns, and you seem all too willing to use yours at the slightest provocation. Humans are supposed to be civilized creatures, and guns have always gotten in the way of civilization." 

Mal stood there, open-mouthed for May a moment before recovering. "You had me throw away my gun for _nothing?"_

"Well, not _nothing_. A thousand years from now, someone will discover the remaining trace of your gun and use the evidence they find to interdict the entire planet as still too violent to join the Galactic League, sparing the planet from a bloody and bitter civil war that would have killed most of the population."

The comforting thump of the TARDIS landing signaled the end of their journey, interrupting Mal's building aggravation and preventing him from cornering The Doctor long enough to explain to him in very small words what kind of offense it was to make a man sacrifice his gun for nothing. The Doctor gave Mal a small case of precious gems that would keep Serenity in food and supplies for a year, and Mal stepped outside the TARDIS, still not entirely sure he wasn't on some sort of drug trip.

Being back on Serenity was coming back home after a very strange trip. This ship he knew, every inch, every corridor, every lovable person on his crew...and Jayne. It was the right size for everything and just a bit too cozy for everyone, so they all had to get along. The TARDIS felt like it needed more people to be a proper ship - not just one or two people along for a joyride, but a proper crew that could live inside and cook and swim and maybe even hook up with each other on occasion. Now that he was back on Serenity, Mal realized the thing he had been missing all this time were the sounds and sights and smells of a working, healthy crew.

Inara descending from her shuttle broke his philosophizing. He headed over to her with a big grin on his face, ready to tell her about this latest job and the exceptional payday he had achieved, only to have it wiped away when she slapped him hard across the cheek.

"You _know_ better than to send someone to me when I already have a client," she snarled at him. "And _naked_ , Mal? What kind of joke is that?" 

Before Mal could muster a response, or even a declaration of pain, Inara stormed back into her shuttle, raising and dismissing plans to remove parts of his anatomy most painfully. Mal sat down in the cargo bay and opened the case. Tucked in neatly with the gemstones was a note. Unfolding it, Mal read the few lines of neat script.

_You also needed to be unarmed when Ms. Sera slapped you, or else you and I might have had a long discussion about violence and pacifism that would have ended with you shooting me. As I'm sure you have figured out by now, Captain, nobody likes to be shot. The thirteen times before this that we have done this have been incredibly painful to live through. I'm so glad we don't have to do this. Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey and all that._

Mal dropped the note on the deck, closed up the case of gems, and purposefully walked away from the cargo bay, trying very hard to hold on to his sanity. Even though time travel wouldn't be out of the ordinary, considering the day he had just had, Mal knew that admitting to it at this point would be too much. He was going to need at least two drinks before he even wanted to try.

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to a passing azure star for helping spot where early drafts of this story weren't clicking.


End file.
